The freebie arrives seamlessly: the offer pops up on the smartphone screen and users click "yes" or "no," then move their device towards a given location, maybe a seat cushion or nearby poster. No uploads, photos, or tedium. It's easy.

Or, as marketers say, "frictionless." The technology enabling these simple promotions, near-field communication ( NFC), is now being touted as a the next big thing in interactive marketing in a recent Forrester report and elsewhere.

And it could be huge in mobile publishing (explanation below), finally enabling mobile publishers to cash in on the growing scale of mobile, always-on consumption habits, and consumer migration to the "second screen" during TV or desktop viewing.

It works like this: phones are built with an NFC chip, which can "talk" to other small, cheap NFC chips called "tags" embedded in nearby objects. (They usually look like stickers.) Only a handful of smartphones are currently built with NFC, but more are expected in the coming few years.

So far NFC has mainly been touted as a digital wallet solution and researched by hardware makers like Google. But NFC could also be huge for content publishers, from brands like Coke to editorial houses like the Wall Street Journal, enabling them to interact easily with a mobile audience.

Publishers could embed NFC chips into books and magazines, allowing them to link content to commerce offerings -- a restaurant coupon, say -- and claim a share of the resulting revenue from the merchant. Purchases can be directly tracked, via communication between the phone and tag.

Can micro-payments and revenue partnerships finally monetize mobile publishing in a way that measly advertising revenue and modest subscription metrics have not?

DISCOVERY IN A CLUTTERED WORLDConsumers have a finite attention span. Content, ads, and gimmicks are infinite. How do you break through?

INSTAGRAM, TUMBLR, PINTEREST, Facebook And Beyond: Making Money On The Visual WebThe Visual Web is booming. Instagram's addictive photo-sharing service was snapped up by Facebook for $1B in April, Pinterest and Tumblr have reported noteworthy growth, and Facebook IPO'd at a $104B valuation. Publishers like Business Insider, Cheezburger Network, Buzzfeed are harnessing the attraction of slideshows and pictures. What are the best strategies for making money on the rise of the Visual Web?

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